My daughter's father is Spanish, but he does not follow football or enjoy football culture in Spain, probably for the same reason that I don't follow major league sports in this country very closely although I love athletic competitions: corrupted by money, hyper-masculinity of an unpleasant variety, homophobia, etc. But in this World Cup, I have been rooting for Spain to advance to the semi-finals because I actually know something about the players and the team from having spent time in Spain every year for the last fifteen years. If you read the papers or watch TV, even just the comedy shows, you can't help but learn about the club rivalries, the names and personalities of the players (and their nicknames), their girlfriends, the coaches, how the national side have never advanced past the quarter-finals before, bla bla bla.
So even though for professional reasons I root for all the Latin American teams, and for admiration of their play I enjoy watching the Dutch and the Germans (two of the best matches I have seen have been theirs, and their handsome coach Joachim Loew has not been allowed to clean his "lucky blue sweater"!), I have to root for La furia roja to go to the final round.
and also because of this:
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3 comments:
Good point about being able to enjoy national sports that are not of one's nation.
I haven't enjoyed any sporting event the way I've been enjoying this World Cup, and I do think part of it is that I have no horse in the race.
In fact, I've never even paid attention to the race before.
So it's fresh and fun.
I'm wearing oranj today for the Dutch, since they are one of my geography books.
My dad has often said that when he was in medical school in Madrid nobody in his circle liked football because they viewed it as Franco's opiate of the masses. And of course they didn't support Real Madrid because it was Franco's team. In contemporary Spanish football, while I can see that the hypermasculinity and homophobia would be a big turnoff, it is interesting how regional politics play out. David Villa wears both the Spanish and Asturianu (my roots!) flag on his shoes. Although most of my relatives are in Madrid, I think the success of the Spanish team is even sweeter because they're mostly Barca.
On another note, I found it very interesting that Univision announcers were talking up Spain representing el idioma after they beat Germany. Post-game coverage featured Spain fans in Miami, and the announcers were going on about how you-the-viewer might have Spanish relatives or at least Spanish blood. I don't know anything about Univision's politics, but I'd be very interested to know if other Spanish language media outlets are saying similar things, and how people react to that.
One Univision announcer did use the sonorous phrase "la lengua de Cervantes" at one point when talking about Uruguay and Spain being in the finals! I have also been following some Latinos on Twitter who are making jokes about how you have to root for the Latin American teams, but not for Argentina if there is a choice, and there is general sadness that it's an all European final. I'm not sure how far Cervantes will take them if they get all anti-colonial about it!
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